Federal research center
Appears in 5 stories · Last updated Oct 30, 2026
Operates Perseverance from Pasadena, California
Perseverance set a new off-world driving record on October 11, 2026, when its odometer read 45.22 kilometers. Opportunity needed nearly 15 years to reach 45.16 kilometers. Perseverance took 5.5.
Updated Oct 30
Co-developer of the ice-sheet model and operator of polar monitoring satellites
Warm seawater pushes several kilometers inland beneath Thwaites Glacier, and a model that accounts for it doubles the glacier's projected contribution to sea level by 2100, to about 30mm. The study was published Oct. 12 in Nature Communications.
Updated Oct 22
As of October 2026: Built and operates the Perseverance rover
NASA's Perseverance rover has found that Mars' Jezero Crater hosted three separate water systems: carbon-dioxide-rich groundwater, a standing lake, and later hot underground fluids. Each altered the same rocks in different ways, at different times.
Updated Oct 2
As of May 2026: Operates the Curiosity rover mission
For 14 years, the Curiosity rover has looked for organic molecules on Mars by heating samples in a tiny onboard oven. The method works, but it destroys fragile compounds before they can be identified. On April 22, 2026, NASA reported that a different technique—squirting a chemical solvent onto a Martian rock sample before heating it—revealed more than 20 organic molecules the rover had never seen before.
Updated May 31
As of May 2026: Leading U.S. operations for SWOT mission
NASA's SWOT satellite caught a magnitude 8.8 Kamchatka earthquake's tsunami in unprecedented detail on July 30, 2025. The waves scattered, interacted, and dispersed across the Pacific, contradicting the 50-year assumption that they travel as one coherent swell.
Updated May 19
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